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Location Doncaster North Junction, England

Customer

Contact

Machine resource

Network Rail, Doncaster Maintenance Delivery Unit

Darren Slade, Works Delivery Supervisor0786 6268 466darren.slade@networkrail.co.uk

BVES - RailVac RA7

“There were numerous signal and telecoms cables within the multiple track complex that had to remain intact with no risk of damage. Only the RailVac could do what we wanted, and with the speed and power of its vacuum excavation capability.......”

Darren Slade, Network Rail

Doncaster North Junction, North end of Doncaster Station track and points complex, ballast badly contaminated. Very difficult to gain access on a Saturday night with limited possession time. Alternative solutions not viable due to time required for disconnections of signal and telecoms cabling (S&T), so RailVac used over 10 weekends to remove 500 tonnes + ballast for re-filling and forming with fresh ballast.

Situation

Testimonial - Doncaster North Jcn

RailVac – designed for those otherwise impossible ballast replacement jobs

Sometimes all the criteria that make an ordinary maintenance job near impossible can come together: a major section of track with all sorts of switches and crossings, tied timbers, too many disconnections to make and re-connect in the amount of total possession time, the restrictions of possession time in terms of setting things up and in position - let alone winding them down again - the sheer volume of work to do, and then there’s all the location and access issues…

Doncaster Station, North Junction

Just north of Doncaster Station about 400 metres of track complex involving lines and points that were heavily used by passenger and freight services had become heavily contaminated over many years with coal dust, spillage, oil and other waste.

The formation had become very poor and it was assessed by Darren Slade, (Works Delivery Supervisor), needing removal and replacement as soon as possible, but like so many ballast replacement projects, the traditional methodologies presented a host of other potentially even more time consuming problems.

No other choice or solution

Using a Gopher undercutting machine in this particular circumstance would have meant a lot of signal and telecoms cabling disconnections before any undercutting work could even be started, and in Darren’s opinion there were just far too many to do, making this route a non-starter option. A full relay was another possibility, but again, the time involved with disconnections ruled it out.

Darren had seen the RailVac RA7 in action on a smaller project at Kirton Lane, and had seen how it could reduce what was thought to be quite a large job to a matter of a couple of hours work in terms of ballast removal. He’d also seen that with the RailVac’s speed of operation, the back-filling with new ballast could be carried out once the ballast under a section of between 3 to 5 sleepers had been removed, so that the tasks of removing and re-filling could be done as one integrated process that in turn maximised the limited possession time available.

With around 400 yards of multiple lines to access, get equipment into position and then remove at least 500 tonnes of contaminated ballast, and then back fill, was a very tall order but Darren could see that the RailVac was the ideal solution for the task of ballast removal in the particular circumstances presented by the location.

Duration of 10 weekend possession times

Back in April a programme started involving possession times over 10 weekends, using the latest RailVac RA7 as the key to the solution. Darren explains: “There were numerous signal and telecoms cables within the multiple track complex that had to remain intact with no risk of damage. Only the RailVac could do what we wanted, and with the speed and power of its vacuum excavation capability, I knew we could maximise the limited possession time in terms of ballast removal, and thus the replacement of new clean ballast to restore the formation.”

“I was also aware that as the RailVac revealed the undersides of the sleepers, we’d probably find that more of them needed replacement than was apparent from the initial external inspections we’d made, so that was another factor we had to bear in mind.”

Two hours in each possession time to remove 50 tonnes of ballast each weekend

Once it started, the RailVac proved Darren’s strategy of using this Swedish innovation, as he explained “Once we started, made everything safe and had got everything into position, the time in which the RailVac had to operate was down to around 2 hours, so you can start to see why the task took as long as it did. Nonetheless, the speed of the RailVac was deeply impressive.”

“Over a weekend even within such limited amounts of time the RailVac typically removed around one load (the RailVac RA7 is designed to carry around 50 tonnes of spoil, ballast etc.) ie. about 50 tonnes of contaminated ballast – there’s no way we could have achieved that sort of volume in the time available using any other approach.” Multiply one weekend by 10 and you arrive at a very impressive 500 tonnes removed over the duration of the project, ”At least 500 tonnes!” as Darren added.

With the RailVac removing the contaminated ballast, it was relatively straightforward to move other equipment like RRVs into place to take the ballast away and others to bring in the fresh ballast to complete the back-filling. In the meanwhile, all the S&C was perfectly safe from any risk of damage and could be left intact, due to the nature of the vacuum excavation technique.

Summary: job done, on time, on budget, and all in complete safety

Darren sums up his views on the Doncaster Station project: “As the job progressed, it revealed as we expected more repair and maintenance work to be carried out in the future, chiefly some sleepers that will need replacing. But the removal and replacement of the 500 tonnes plus of the old contaminated ballast has been achieved, within the planned possession time and all in complete safety.”

“Safety is the main thing, and the RailVac enhances that aspect significantly as it’s operated by its own expert and experienced team who know exactly what they’re doing in these situations, and are familiar with all our local health and safety requirements.”

“There were some minor issues with gauge and overhead lines, but nothing of any significance. Overall, there’s no doubt that the RailVac’s a very good bit of kit, especially when you think of the very limited time it had to remove 50 tonnes of contaminated ballast in one session. This job’s gone really well and the whole track complex re-ballasting has been completed to plan and on time.”

”Terrific!”

BVES - RailVac RA7

Pictures from Darren Slade

RailVac RA7 - Work in progress Works completed!

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